PHP Technical Architect/Senior Developer

Company Brief

Fitch Learning is a leader in financial services training. With unrivaled breadth and depth of training, the company delivers learning solutions to customers with varying level of experience from apprentices and graduates to those with 10+ years’ experience in Financial Services. A truly global company with offices around the world providing services to many of the largest banks and financial institutions.

As part of the wider Fitch Group which includes Fitch Ratings and Fitch Solutions, Fitch Learning is a 250 person business. Agile and fast-paced, we take pride in our ability to tailor our solutions to a wide range of Financial Services clients with operations in more than 30 countries.

We’re looking for individuals with drive, flexibility, and passion to help us deliver a world-class service to our clients. In return, Fitch Learning offers a fast-paced, start-up like environment with considerable financial backing and stability that you associate with a larger corporate. It’s a place where you can really make a difference and progress in your career.

Role Purpose:

Our technology platform is integral to everything we do, and we are constantly looking for ways to use technology to improve our internal and external services and products. As a tech architect/lead developer, you will be expected to take a proactive and forward-thinking approach in utilizing cutting-edge technology on our platforms. Our internally developed systems cover a diverse range of products from industry-leading e-learning platforms to highly integrated office logistics.

Having all core systems running in AWS, we are looking for someone who is keen to take advantage of cloud architectures while engaging with the team to leverage new technologies. Working in a combination of Symfony, Laravel, and in-house MVC frameworks, you will be required to design and build new features, as well as maintain and improve existing ones.

Our team consists of highly experienced PHP developers utilizing modern CI/CD practices and backed by dedicated developer operations and project management. We strive to recruit top talent who can fit in and be part of the friendly, collaborative, and social dynamic of our team. We value critical thinking, problem solving, well thought out design, and enjoy building features that empower our business. As an education company, we believe in continuous learning and development, and we encourage a culture accepting of new ideas and technologies.

This is a hybrid role with 3 days a week at our central London office.

Responsibilities:

• Work within an Agile team to design, develop, and maintain our enterprise applications, e-learning portals, and web services with PHP on a mix of in-house and off-the-shelf frameworks and tools
• Apply sound software design patterns and industry-standard conventions
• Design, build, and optimize database systems to support the above applications and services
• Translate business requirements into technical specifications
• Build client and management reports and tools
• Maintain a high-quality code base following best practices and documenting as needed
• Support our global user base of customers and staff
• Evaluate feasibility and recommend technical solutions
• Contribute to the evolution of the developer tool-set and related technologies
• Provide mentoring and technical guidance for less experienced developers

Required:

• Strong development experience with object-oriented PHP
• Good understanding of MVC frameworks such as Symfony and Laravel
• Excellent analysis and design/architecture skills
• Ability to capture obscure business requirements, model complex workflows, break down and implement large features as well as reverse engineer when needed
• High awareness of how design and implementation choices impact extensibility, maintainability, performance, scalability, and security
• Experience integrating systems using web services, especially REST APIs
• Good understanding of object-oriented design patterns and SOLID principles
• Strong attention to code quality and readability
• Experience designing relational database schemas
• Raw SQL writing and optimization, especially with MySQL
• Understanding of code branching and feature workflows with Git
• Hands-on experience on the LAMP stack
• Good knowledge of HTML 4 and 5
• Understanding of CSS cascading, specificity, inheritance, floating, and positioning
• Experience with JavaScript, AJAX, and DOM manipulation
• Experience with unit and functional testing
• Knowledge of application containerization with Docker
• Excellent problem-solving skills

Desirable:

• Enterprise level/ERP application development experience
• Knowledge of Continuous Integration and Deployment CI/CD concepts and tools
• Familiarity with cloud architecture and deployment, especially on AWS
• Good front-end skills